She Went From Failed Flipper To 4 Sober Living Homes In 90 Days

So first of all, um, good to be on a call with you. Could you introduce yourself and your, your business and where you're located?

Sure. My name is Katrina Roberson. I'm based in Texas and I'm the founder of Rise Again Housing. Um, it's a sober living and supportive housing program. I also look forward to real estate background, which I am a fix and flipper and I focus heavily on investments.

Awesome. Thank you for sharing. Um, so fix and flipping, why choose to do something else? Why hold long-term? Why do sober living?

So my houses, the 3 that I have, sat on the market for 4 months and I was just panicking like, oh my God, I'm in a hard money loan. They only give you 12 months. That's to fix, renovate, and sell. And here I, I bought the homes in April and here it is in November. So time is of the essence. So I was looking at independent living facilities when I did my search on Facebook, and your ad popped up with the interview you did, a podcast interview. Um, I watched the whole thing and I said, wow, I had never heard of this. And what attracted me was the whole licensing thing. And there was, uh, state laws that prohibit counties, states from allowing us, not allowing us to operate a sober living facilities. And since I said, oh, this is case law, attractive, legal, and I can make money, I'm jumping on it. Because that was another alternate solution than trying to rent it out through Section 8 in single family and make $200.

Yeah, traditional cash flow is not that awesome. Um, okay, so you wanted to help some people make a little bit more, offset your cost. Did you have hard money loans on those flips?

Yes, I always went through, because I buy them in my LLC, I use a hard money lender because I can put $10,000 down. And they give me the renovation budget. And as long as the house appraised for what I did my market research on, then not only I make a profit, but I get a return on my investment. And I build beautiful houses in the community.

Yeah, that's awesome. So but these ones weren't, weren't selling. And so you had to pivot.

I had to pivot.

Yeah, I've been there. I was a flipper before too.

Yeah.

And so you ended up finding us. You chose this over doing sober living, over Section 8, over anything like that. It sounds like it was new for you. So what exactly did we provide for you when you joined? And yeah, like what, what value did you get from our community?

So what was just amazing to me was the courses and the weekly calls, but I barely maybe attended 3 weekly calls. You know, it was just the introduction of the students and, you know, how to navigate it. And then maybe a Saturday call with— I think that was Dr. J, I believe.

Yeah, yeah, we have multiple calls. But yeah, she's, she's our, our expert in, uh, North Carolina.

Yep. And but what really attracted me— and I've taken a lot of courses, Andrew, and I spent a lot of money on courses, and they was never fine-tuned, it was always confusing— the fact that I was able to follow step by step and I was able to take my time and implement those steps. And if I had questions, I looked on the search bar first, and 9 times out of 10, somebody already went through what I went through, and I was able to quickly get my answer and keep going. And if I didn't have that, I knew I had a backup resource. If I waited Wednesday or Thursday or Saturday, I can get my questions answered or face any challenges. The fact that you guys offer business funding, I mean, you just gave everything that a person needed from a newbie perspective to the most serious person, experienced person. You just touched on all points where anybody at any phase could jump in and get going with this business model.

I love it. And you have definitely gotten going. You mentioned you didn't, you didn't come to many of the coaching calls. We're there for you when you need us. It's kind of the point. It's a place to come and get unstuck and ask very specific questions. Um, and it took you a little bit to get started and just get through the material, but then you started hitting the ground running, and it's just like every other day you're posting win after win after win. And so what does it look like today? How many homes do you have? What kind of results were we able to help you get? Because you've taken off.

I know it looked like that because I was in the process of refinancing the homes out of hard money loans because they sat on the market. So I already had to start with 3. But going through the shopping process, furnishing these homes, it led me to the opportunity to get arbitrage homes, which you go over that in your course as well. I had no idea what that was about. And I ended up acquiring a home through buying stuff from Facebook, just telling them who I am, what I do, and what I'm buying this stuff for. Just a casual conversation. It just fell on my lap. So now I have 4 homes and I'm in the Dallas area. Yep.

So here's the thing though, you've only been in the community for 3 months.

Yeah, 4 homes.

That's crazy.

Yep, yep. I have 4 homes. They're all furnished, uh, the shopping list help, the drug testing recommendation help, the putting it on subscription, like all that, you know. Um, the hiring manager— I have a post on Indeed right now, just use your documents, change my name. I have 20 people apply. I haven't even got to the interview part.

Oh my goodness.

Yeah, 20 people apply in just Houston alone. I haven't even talked about the other areas. Just 20 people, like, soon I post, 20 people applied. I was like, oh my God, I was kind of waiting for it to trickle through, but no, the next day was 3, 6, 9, it just kept going. I'm like, oh my God, which is the best way to do it, right?

I think a lot of people, they end up making choices based on who they know or who shows up as soon as they feel pain. You can't hire someone great unless you have a lot of options because the human brain only works in comparison.. And so yeah, we try to give you those tools to help you make the best decision, right? And get a lot of candidates so you can choose the right one. Well, I love that that's working out for you.

Uh, oh, and your 30, 60, 90 days work because I tried to make, um, one of the peers a home captain and I did that 30 days. It wasn't working out and I did it for another 60 days. They've almost made it, but that stuff like that, this, you're worth every dime. And the fact that Tron in Texas knew who your program was and familiar with your policies and procedures.

Yes. Tell me more about that. I mean, I get that we have a lot of people in Texas, and so they're probably submitting a ton of applications. I didn't know they knew about us.

Yes, he knew about it. He's like, yeah, I'm familiar with his program and his policy and procedure, and I know how much you guys pay for that program. And I was like, so does this mean I can't apply? Like, what are you saying? He's like, no, it's on point. It's exactly what we need. It's exactly what we're looking for. I mean, you guys could have came to us. And I'm like, well, we didn't know that. It's— they sell policy and procedures and templates and stuff too.

Okay, that's interesting. And so a lot of the reason why we provided it is because we looked across the landscape of our affiliates in every state and noticed they all run differently. And some have some templates, some are outdated, some don't have any templates at all, and they ask you to submit everything and they give you nothing to work with. And so we just said, let us put all this together. One of our students, a technical writer, helped, uh, because she was going through the process in Washington. And so that's what we made available for everybody because we know it works, uh, for every state.

Uh, so it's true, he was impressed. He said, I'm impressed, this is way more intel than what we have.

Exactly. Thank you. I thought so.

Yeah, so he was very impressed.

That's good to know. Um, I think sometimes people, uh, they feel like it's somewhat deceptive to say that we have, uh, approved documents, but they've been used in pretty much every state and they help people fly through the process and they are very comprehensive. And so the whole idea is you don't have to reinvent the wheel or start from scratch, you can just change the logo, change your name, your company name, and change, you know, make small tweaks to whatever you want to. It's your business, so you can make any tweak you want. But you can just go and apply and fly through, and, and as long as you operate by those policies and procedures, you're good to go.

He do make sure you know them. So in the interview process, I passed this heavy assessment first time up. But because of it, I passed the interview process first time up. Had I not had that program, your program, to be educated and understand what the business model is, what am I exactly getting into, what things I'm going to face from other people experience in the classroom. That's where I've learned this business from. I may not comment on everyone, but I'm reading those posts. You know, when somebody had to put somebody out on Thanksgiving, I read that post and what they had to go— I read them all because you get your best experience from learning from other people pain points or success points. So everything, because of that community, it looks like I'm taking off, but it was— the blueprint was already there. I just followed it.

Yeah, that's awesome. And now you're helping build that for other people because you're posting all of your wins and successes as well, providing inspiration for them. Well, if someone was on the fence about working with us, what would you say to them?

What? Are you crazy? Do it. Don't think about it. Do it. Because once you see how easy it is— and I'm not the brightest tool in the box, I can say that., but I know how to follow steps A, B, C, D, and that's what I got. Easy process steps to follow. Even the most challenging softwares that you called out and say you can use it if you want to, you still have options to do what best for you and what works for you. And we have an amazing community that don't get keep, they share. I mean, welcome everyone from, hey, I just started today to, hey, I'm on my 10th house. You have wealth of knowledge there, so you will be supported and just don't think about it. Just join.

Yeah. Well, thank you so much for choosing to share. I know we were, we were talking about something else and you were like, I want to share. So, um, yeah, I'm so excited for you. You're still just getting started, like only 90 days in. I'm excited to see what the next 90 looks like. And, um, yeah, thank you for sharing your feedback, sharing inside the community. Um, being fully transparent, like people are sharing their wins and their tough times in the community. It's not all, it's not all fun and games. Um, but people get through it so much faster because we can all share that transparently and learn together. So thank you for doing that. And, um, yeah, we need to check in in like a year and see where you're at then.

Yes. Yes, absolutely. I'd love to come back and talk about it for sure.

Awesome. Well, thanks for joining with me today and, uh, see you next time.